


The Knocks Before

by RiseiTekiSensei



Series: It's A Long Story [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, I am fandom trash, I love that trope, Pre-Game(s), Sans Curses, Slow Burn, Soriel, Thus the rating, all of the fluff, existential fluff, sorielweek, sorielweek2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 03:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7828405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiseiTekiSensei/pseuds/RiseiTekiSensei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just two snap shots from Sans and Toriel's lives before Frisk fell into the Underground, and deals with the growth of their relationship around the door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dire-y Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 1 of #SorielWeek2016 on tumblr. The prompt was Jokes. You can find more information and other submissions at sorielweek.tumblr.com.

_ What am I doing? _ Toriel thought to herself for what felt like the hundredth time. 

Honestly, though, what was she actually trying to accomplish with this? She glared down at the half filled page and twirled her pen once more. She had been sitting there for the better part of two hours trying to fill her diary with puns and jokes, for no real reason. Or at least not for a very  **good** reason. 

_ Or for a completely foolish reason… _ Finally she put her pen down and stood up. This was getting her nowhere fast and she ought to be doing  **something** of value with her time. She could read something...  _ I’ve read all of these thousands of times. _ She could tend to the the garden…  _ I did that this morning. _ She could knit…  _ But I usually wait until he’s found a new book to read to me.  _

As she paced around her home looking for something of value to accomplish she kept ending up back at her dining table where the crisp white and tragically empty pages sat there mocking her ludicrous attempt to- her attempt to- Her attempt to do  **what** exactly? 

Why has she been trying to stockpile jokes? Sure, she was not quite as good at off the cuff puns and jokes as he was but- but so what? So what if she was not as good at it as he was, that did not really matter not to him and certainly not to  **her** . 

Certainly not.

She was  **not** trying to impress him with her levity or witty banter. She was  **not** trying to prove to him that she could keep up with him. Surely, there was  **no** need to convince him that she was worth the time. That she was worth taking time out of his very busy work day, just to hike all the way out here. In the snow. Where she made him sit for hours… He always said he didn’t mind, but even on her warm enclosed side the snowy outside left her with chills. And she was a great big furred goat-monster. With fire magic! 

 

_ I just- _

_ I  _ **_just_ ** _ \-  _

_ I just want to give him a good reason to stay… to give him a reason to come back.  _

 

Because now that she knew what it was like to have him in her life, to have him be just a knock away, she didn’t think she would be able to handle losing him, no matter how selfish that was. She didn’t think she could survive losing that connection to the outside world. The world full of life, and hopes, and dreams, full of futures and laughter. She was certain she wouldn’t be able to survive another bout of self-imposed isolation, not now. She’d had gotten a taste of what companionship was like again and now, she craved it. 

She blew out a breath. This wasn’t helping, so she closed her diary. She needed… She needed… To go out! Just to get out of the stuffy little house for a while.  _ Perhaps I should take a nice long walk… Or I could go do my shopping! _

With a new goal in mind and a few hours still left between now and their agreed upon meeting time, she set out with a list, a large hand-made bag, and a handful of gold. 

 

* * *

Soon she realized she had made a mistake.

Not because the little market was going to be crowded or because she wasn’t going to make it back in time. No, this had been a mistake because it had given her plenty of time to think. 

At first she had been thinking about picking up something sweet for a new pie, but as she walked her mind wandered back to its new favorite topic: her mysterious friend on the other side of the door. Old jokes and particularly well-delivered puns trickled into her mind. She knew she must be wearing some kind of ludicrous starstruck smile, but she just couldn’t make herself care about appearances through the giddiness welling up in her soul. 

Then her thoughts traveled to the not so distant location of  _ what does he look like? _ A well trodden path.

His voice had always sounded deep and masculine to her ear, so her mind always started by conjuring up a large shadowy figure. She was never really sure if her mind started here because it made the most logical sense or because that shape was one that she had been  **very** familiar with a long time ago. The corners of her mouth tugged down slightly. 

But her height analysis didn’t have to be based solely on assumptions anymore. She had learned something new about her friend. He had told her more about his younger brother: the younger monster was taller than himself. The shadow figure shrunk in size, now she was a good head taller than him.  _ It makes sense, I am quite large and I am so very much taller than most other monsters… Besides, his knocks always seemed to emanate lower on the door than my own. _ But still she could draw more information out of this little tidbit, for the way he described his beloved brother’s height said a lot more than any words ever could. He’d had the sound of a monster that had let his jealousy fade into a kind of simple resignation many years ago. Therefore, his brother must have surpassed him in height when they were younger.  _ Perhaps, it had happened in his teens for he cannot be out of his twenties yet. _ The silhouette shrunk a little bit more, now he stood below her shoulder. 

She began to thicken the figure, make him a bit heavier, a bit sturdier. Partly, to compensate for the height loss, yet keep the rich baritone she knew he had; and partly because she remembered the way he huffed and crunched through the snow as he sat and shifted by the door. He had once said that his brother would often give him grief,  _ as siblings often do _ , about his unhealthy eating habits so she felt the weight change was fair.  _ Short and stout and full of laughter. _ She felt her smile returning in full force. 

She hesitated at a crossroads in the abandoned city. Toriel normally continued straight here, it was the fastest way to the little market, but if she went left it took her on a much longer and more winding path to the market.  _ I do not need to be back for quite awhile, but do I truely want more time to play this silly game? _

The shadow figure standing next to her looked up and then gestured to the left before pulling a smile onto his anonymus features and turning down the left path. Toriel smiled despite herself and followed after. 

_ Now that I have given you a height and weight, what kind of monster are you? _ The figure shrugged back. Something about the motion seemed almost painfully familiar, especially while she walked down this path. It was like she had traveled with him before. It felt like an odd kind of deja vu. 

She wasn’t sure what to make of the odd sensation, so she shook it off and continued her mental exercise. She thought back to all of their conversations and tried to find a pattern in his puns and jokes. She knew he must have a preference for certain puns, the way she enjoys goat, snail, and baking puns. He seemed to like pasta ones, but she believed that they were more for his brother than anything else. He like snow puns, but again it was not of much help because he lived in Snowdin.  _ The name of the town itself is a pun, I wonder if that is one of the reasons as to why he chose to live there? _

As always, her mind came back to the only pattern that seemed relevant to this little endeavor. Bones. He seemed inordinately fond of bone and skeleton puns. But still this left her with a few options. 

The shadowed figure, became white and fluffy and had quite a large tail. The happy dog face winked at her. She had to stifle a giggle. The stout man, seemed to change fur length and color, bone structure and posture, every time she lost sight of him.  _ Ah but there are so many different types dog-monsters, how can I decide on just one? _ But she didn’t feel as if this monster type was quite right. Her friend may have howled with laughter a few times, but she had never heard him bark or chuff the way she often bleated. The figure regained its shadowy form once more, he seemed to almost shrug again and ceased his excited circling. 

This felt more right, his slow amiable shuffle seemed to match what she knew of his personality. Not the hyperactive movement typical for dog-monsters.  _ A ghost, then? Having no bones and yet telling puns about them would be-  _ **_humerus._ ** Now she did laugh, and so did her companion. His voice echoed in her thoughts, that familiar laugh she’d grown so fond of. If he had been a ghost, then why hadn’t he just floated through the door? And his voice didn’t have that echoed quality ghost-monsters speech often had. 

This left her with one option and she felt that it had the most supporting evidence.  _ A skeleton, then. _ She had even heard him refer to his brother’s childhood as being when he was ‘a babybones’.

But before her companion could change shape, she cast him into the back of her mind. She had reached the little market. 

She felt herself drift into the routine of the market, so she didn’t feel too bad that she was lost in thought. It wasn’t like the Froggits and Whimsuns were going to speak with her anyway. 

_ A skeleton. _ It wasn’t unheard of, per say, she had known that a few skeleton-monster families had made it to the Underground, but they were no longer the great noble houses of old. So many had died in the war that their numbers had dwindled down to too few for them survive. Those first few generations that grown up in the Underground had been tragic as monster diversity plummeted. She sighed as she selected a bundle of carrots from the Vegetoid farmer’s display table. 

Her friend and his brother might be the last few skeletons left in the whole Underground. They might never know about their once great lineage nor of the Boss Monsters in their ancestry. Toriel began to think that maybe this walk might not have been the best idea. She shuffled from stall to stall selecting the items from her list and paying the vendors. 

She turned back towards the road, the short way, she wasn’t in the mood to continue her leisurely stroll. As she began to walk out of the little market something caught her eye. There was a little stand with few items for sale, but it was one of the only tables that had tomatoes. The little nightshade fruits were very hard to recreate with magic and only very skilled farmers could craft them. But that wasn’t why she had stopped. 

 

_...From my head  _ **_to-ma-toes_ ** **!**

 

The pun blossomed in her mind without obstruction and in its wake other vegetable and fruit puns soon followed.  _ I’ve never  _ **_bean_ ** _ better! These puns are one in a  _ **_melon_ ** _!  _ **_Lettuce_ ** _ not get a  _ **_head_ ** _ of ourselves! With this many puns I’ll be able to  _ **_cherry_ ** _ pick the very best ones! I think he will like these puns  _ **_berry_ ** _ much!  _  In her pun-struck state, the walk home had passed by almost without her notice.

As she mused she was struck with another thought, or rather a face. One that she had never seen before. It was rather fleeting, like a glance in passing, but it made her soul flutter in hopeless and confused recognition. A rounded skull, all smiles and shadowed eye sockets. His face was turned up towards hers, like a flower towards the sun, eyes closed as he beamed at her.  

As she closed her door behind herself, she felt her face flush a little at the thought of all that attention and obvious affection that face had been directing towards her. But still, she didn’t  _ know _ him. Although, she could make a very good guess at who her mind wanted to believe that unknown face belonged to. The color in her face deepened as she unloaded her groceries onto her table. Next to her abandoned diary. She plucked up the pen and flipped open to the her latest page. It was half-filled just as before, but she was about to fix that. 

And so she began walking from the table to the fridge one hand with something to put away, the other with the pen that she was using to fill up the blank pages of her diary. Every item she picked up became another pun on the pages beneath her paws.  _ Oh, he will not know what hit him! This time I will be the one to make  _ **_him_ ** _ cry with tears of unbearable joy! _ She grinned mischievously to herself. She could just imagine it, him lying out there crunching around in the snow as he clutched at his sides.  _ Deep laughter echoed through the trees, _ it made her soul soar, _ blue against the snowy white, his perma-grin twisted up higher as he screwed his eyes sockets shut- _

She blushed.  _ Where had that come from? _ It was like she had been there watching the skeleton-monster from before, one that she wasn’t actually sure was real monster or not, almost rattle himself apart as he shook with uncontrollable laughter. She felt like these little flashes, these not quite memories, should be worrying her.  _ What is happen- _

 

*Donggg Donggg Donggg!* 

 

The old fashioned clock she kept near her fireplace, chimed for the hour. It their meeting time.  _ I shall have to ponder this more later.  _ She snapped up her dairy and headed for the stairs that led down into the tunnel below. 

She snagged a large wicker basket from its position by the stairs on her way by it and took the steps two at a time. Her great big feet padded silently through the old darkened tunnel. With her long strides it did not take her long to reach the door. She waited, not breathing, just listening. 

She could only hear the crackling of her own excited magic. The other side of the door remained quiet.

She let out her breathe in a sigh of relief. She was early.  _ Good that will give me a little time to get settled.  _ She placed the basket down and pulled two large pillows and a thick blanket from within it. This process was starting to become old hat for her as she constructed a little fluffy nest at the base of the door. She had learned rather early on in their little meetings, that she was much too old to sit down on the fridge stone floor for hours at a time without some kind of cushioning. 

Once she had settled herself she, cracked open her diary to her newest entries and began rereading them while she waited. It didn’t take long.

  
*Knock Knock* “knock, knock.”, said the voice on the other side of the door.


	2. Pie-d Feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Day 2 of #SorielWeek2016 on tumblr. The prompt was Pie/Baking. You can find more information and other submissions at sorielweek.tumblr.com.

_fuck._

  


_fuck._

  


**_fuck._ **

  


_fffffffuuuuuucck._

 

Sans stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling light glared back. The linoleum was not comfortable. He didn’t move. “it’s three a.m….”, he said to no one in particular.

The empty house didn’t dignify that with an answer so he continued, “and i’m making pie…”

Still he received no response.

“i have lost control of my life.” Sans stated. He felt like it was the truest thing he had said aloud in the last twenty four hours.

The oven ticked quietly as it cooled down. _this was_ **_what_ ** _? attempt number five in the last few weeks._

Sans sighed. This was why he shouldn’t be left alone in the middle of the night, because he would start- **baking** . _it’s worse than drunk science with alph… god, now i’m anxiety baking at three in the goddamn morning because i literally can’t sleep!_ He flailed a little on the floor in response to his own patheticness.

Papyrus was just at Undyne’s for a sleepover, _night time training session_ , and he was going to be back bright and early and brimming with enthusiasm in a couple of hours. He really shouldn’t be overreacting to something so small. Hell, this wasn’t even the first sleepover, _night time training session_ , he’d been to either. _hence the previous pie attempts…_

The lady had given him quite a few pie recipes over the last year or so, and he’d tried ‘em all at least once. _heh. even the snail one._ But the really stickler had cropped up when she’d given him this latest one. She’d said how important this one was to her and that to make it right he’d need to make the friggin’ crust **from scratch** , which up until this point he hadn’t been doing. _the bunnies had been more than happy to sell him pre-made pie crusts so it should have really mattered for this one… right?_

“pfft.” Sans snorted to himself. Even he didn’t buy that. It was the way she’d gone on about the importance and special meaning this one had had to her that was making do this. So now here he was lying on the floor while he waited for the pie crust to cool, before he added the chocolatey-marshmallow mess to the crust.

This wasn’t _the_ pie, he wasn’t quite ready to attempt that one yet. He’d wanted to make sure his,  pie crust met her standards. So his sleep deprived brain came up with an absolutely absurd, wildass, harebrained idea: _practice with an easier recipe_. Which, of course, if he had been making the pie crust before when he’d made all the other pies he wouldn’t need to practice.   _it’s not even like she’s_ ** _ever_** _gonna know if i did it right or if even did it at all!_ But the longer he’s known her the harder it has been for him to flat out lie to her. It was starting to get as bad as his inability to straight up lie to Papyrus.

 _at least that makes sense, paps is- well, he’s… papyrus. hmm… i think that's the exact same reason i use to justify why i’m lyin’ to ‘im in the first place… cause he’s papyrus and i don’t want him to worry…_ Sans watched the ceiling. It kinda felt like it was watching him back. His mind continued to wander. _so pap is pap… what’s this lady have then? why am i doing this, any of it really… not just the pie’s but this- this rabbit hole of whys and half-truths and what ifs…_

He didn’t really have a good reason. Well, not one specific reason; it was just a lot of little things that made him care about the voice on the other side of the door. That made him want to make her happy. To make her laugh. _god she has a great laugh, even through the door it sounded like- like an unabashed disharmony. her voice was always so mellifluent- that’s a word she would have used… mel-li-flu-ent…_ **_mellifluent_ ** _…  she's probably really good at crosswords… maybe i’ll ask tomorrow… i wonder if i could snag a couple of the funnier ones from the paper and we could do ‘em together… it’d probably just make her laugh. god he loved her laugh. it was just so not regal and proper and everything that she’d always seemed to be…_

His soul sparked at the idea that he, some nobody skeleton, could make a lady like her want to laugh- to really laugh and mean it. It might have just been because of the anonymity, but she still wanted **him** to be the one to make her laugh. _maybe… it just ‘cause i’m the only one she’s talked to in- in however long she’s been stuck behind that door… but wouldn’t she have asked to meet other people- asked me to stop coming or something… sure we don’t always see eye to eye, probably because she hella tall, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try to understand the other or make compromises with each other… that’s what people in relationships do, right?_

His eye sockets widened as his thoughts came to a crashing hault. _i-i’m not in a relationship with her! w-we’ve never even met, not really- and we don’t hang out all the tim- wait! fuck- okay, but it’s not like we care about each other all that much- yeah this is- this is like a friendship thing, right? … right?!_ The oven ticked quietly.

_shit. okay it’s not like we know everything about each other or shared all are secrets or-_

A recent memory came tumbling into the forefront of his mind, _“I-i just want you to understand, my friend, that I have not given this recipe to anyone before… not even my- well not even an important person who use to be a big part of my life…”_

 

_this isn’t- it's not- we aren’t- i’m not-_

 

He could feel the tingle of magic across his cheekbones and felt betrayed. His hands moved up to hide his face so no one, _in the empty fucking house_ , could his flustered expression.

So there he was lying on the kitchen floor, teaching himself how to make pie crust from scratch, so that way he could put as much effort into making a butterscotch cinnamon pie as she, a lady he’s never met before, would have because it’s something that matters to her so by extension it matters to him. Because his feeling towards her might not be so platonic…

“god, i’m soo **boned** …”, his muffled words echoed softly throughout the small kitchen.

 

* * *

 

Sans woke up on the couch. He didn’t remember making it to the couch. He remembered climbing up off the floor and ‘folding’ the chocolate marshmallow mixture into the whipped cream. He remembered pouring it into the halfway decent pie crust and popping the whole thing back into the fridge. He remembered falling face first onto the threadbare carpeting, but that was really it.

He cracked one eye open and saw the sleep-blurred outline of the living room. And a mug. With several orange sticky notes attached to it. As he shifted to sit up, he dislodged the blanket he hadn’t realized was there. Propped up on one arm he got a better look at the mug, it had his name scrawled across its surface, the sharpie was starting to fade. Something dark filled the mug.

He sat up all the way and scooped up the mug. It was room temperature. He peeled the small stack of sticky notes off of it and took a sip.

 

…

 

_… welp it was room temperature…_

 

Sans wondered if there was some way to chemically analysis the compounds in coffee to determine why hot coffee and iced coffee tasted great, but lukewarm coffee tasted hideous. He’d have to bring it up to Alphys at some point. He stared down into the mug.

He shrugged and took another sip. Coffee’s coffee.

Now, at least partly wake Sans turned his attention to the note his brother had left for him.

‘GOOD [WHATEVER TIME OF DAY IT IS WHEN-’ He flipped to the next note. ‘-YOU FINALLY WAKE UP] SANS!’

Sans could feel his soul melting a little, he wasn’t sure how he could ever survive without Papyrus. _… you don’t... you just_ **_exist_ ** _,_ **_r e m e m b e r_ ** _-_ Sans jerked his head away from the notes and squeezed his eyes shut.

 

_in and out. just move the air in and out… he’s alive, and nothing’s wrong, and you haven’t seen the flower in months… just in and out…_

 

After several long seconds, he turned back towards the sticky notes.

‘TRAINING WITH UNDYNE WENT TREMENDOUSLY-’

‘-WELL! THE HER RESIDENCE IS ONLY MARGINALLY SCORCHED!’

‘-LOVE YOUR SUPERB BROTHER, PAPYRUS’

‘ALSO DO NOT FORGET TO FEED YOUR PET ROCK! -ALSO PAPYRUS’

‘I FED YOUR PET ROCK.-STILL PAPYRUS’

‘DO NOT BE LATE TO THIS AFTERNOON’S PATROL!’

‘-THE GREAT AND PUNCTUAL PAPYRUS’

Sans sat there on the couch and chortled with laughter. Papyrus was a delight to all of the Underground and anyone who thought otherwise hadn’t met him yet. “well, bro i’ll certainly try to be **pun** -ctual too, but i don’t really think you’ll appreciate the effort” ,Sans snickered quietly to himself.

Sans opened his inventory and looked for the “Notebook x4” entry. He selected it and studied the secondary list for a moment. “Brown Notebook” “Grey Notebook” “Blue Notebook” “Black Notebook”.

The brown one was the newest of the bunch and was chalked full of handwritten recipes and annotations. The lady said she hadn’t ever written them down before, so he’d had to. And then he’d had to annotate the hell out of them so he could make heads or tails of the baking instructions. They probably made sense to anyone who’d actually cooked for themselves at some point in their lives, but he was not one of those monsters.

The grey notebook was the smallest and it was full of all kinds of lists or notes or random thoughts that he felt were important enough at the time to take the effort to write them down. He had started using it from both ends and was slowing making his way towards the middle. _the front for me, the back for her..._

The blue notebook was the oldest and was also the one he had been after.

And the black one. He didn’t look at that one unless it was at the top of his inventory list and he couldn’t remember taking it out recently enough to cause it to cycle to the top.

 

He almost never remembered taking it out.

 

Sans summonsed the blue notebook out of his inventory. The old notebook had been blue once upon a time, but now it was a faded greyish color. The front cover had been written on and crossed out several times with several different writing instruments. It didn’t have a new one currently. But none of that was really the most notable thing about it. No, this old journal style book couldn’t actually lie flat because it was jammed full of papers. They were all colors and sizes, all had some kind of writing on them, whether they was drawings or words it didn’t really matter, they all ended up in the book. Most stuck out well past the edges, but Sans couldn’t have cared less.

He flipped to the back and added the small stack of sticky notes to an unoccupied spot. Sans smiled down at the almost pack-rat style collection and dismissed the book back into his inventory.

Sans sipped his tepid coffee once again. The house remained silent.

 _now or never._ He heaved an enormous sigh and completely dislodged the blanket as he got to his feet. Soon his slippers had been reclaimed and he shuffled into the kitchen to assess the damages.

He wasn’t surprised that the whole thing was spotless; he lived with Papyrus, afterall. Sans saw the coffee pot was still half full and he meandered over to it. With one bony hand he checked it’s temperature. It was slightly warmer than the room. _go team._

He splashed more into his mug before heading over to the fridge, the real reason he had gotten up.

The pie didn’t look half bad. The top of the chocolate cream pie was kinda lumpy, but he knew that was just ‘cause he hadn’t bothered to smooth out the filling last night. He didn’t need it to look pretty, besides it wasn’t the part of this experiment that was under review. It was nice to know that he hadn’t screwed it up though, the filling didn’t so much as jiggle as he pulled it out.

As for the crust…

It actually looked pretty good. The ‘crimped’ edges were uneven, but they were a nice goldeny-brown color all the way around. Which was a huge improvement from the underdone one or the burned one or the bubbly one, _i mean how as i supposed to know i had to weigh the damn thing down_.

Sans stared down at the pie sitting on his counter. Part of him really just wanted to get a fork and eat the thing straight from the tin. _save dishes, save hassle…_ But that wasn’t why he’d done this whole ridiculous thing in the first place.

With the flick of a wrist a fork, a knife, and a plate all fetched themselves. Carefully, he cut into the pie. He didn’t bother to cut all the way across he just needed to cut out one slice. The slice wasn’t really centered very well, but again not the point.

 _moment of truth…_ Knife jammed between the outer crust and the aluminum, fingers on top trying to keep it steady, he lifted straight up and-

 

The whole thing felt apart.

 

The filling didn’t seem to be the problem Sans noted as he swiped a glob up off the counter with the tip of a phalange. It seemed just as firm as always, so therefore the issue was of course, the crust.

Half of it seemed to be stuck to the bottom of the pan and the rest was just kinda mushy and sort of fell apart. Sans mulled over this newest **sticking** point as he ate globes of pie off the counter. He must have missed something in the recipe, _again_.

 

* * *

 

Sans crunched through the snow and glowered at his feet. He had poured himself over every inch of that pie crust recipe and he had done everything right! It wasn’t like he was trying to calculate the quantum harmonic resonances within the barrier… again. _even meta-organic-chem was easier than this…_

He’d barely managed to pull himself away from the recipe in time to make it to his meeting with Papyrus. And that was even with a **shortcut** . They still left him a little dizzy, but he didn’t get the skull piercing headaches anymore, so all-in-all he wasn’t feeling to bad. _the disoriation’s probably gonna fade too…_ It only made sense given that his soul was still trying to cope with the its overexposure to Core-rad and the tachyo-magi distortions.

He huffed out a sigh. With his hand stuffed firmly in his pockets, he stomped on. Soon he was across the little bridge and started the long walk to the door. Where he was gonna have to figure out a way to bring up pie and or baking casually enough that he could **offhandedly** mention his latest problem, without letting her know how invested he was in this. He didn’t want to freak her out, but he wasn’t about to let this pie thing beat him. He was determined to-

Sans stopped dead in his tracks.

 

He was Determined.

 

He looked at his hands, they weren’t shaking. His ribcage felt fine. His soul pulsed slowly and rhythmically like always.  This was the first time it didn’t feel like the stuff was trying to burn its way out of him. _was it finally starting to integrate?_ He shivered at the thought.

It was probably for the best, though.This way it wouldn’t start trying to melt him from the inside out every chance that toxic crap got. But what kind of side effects were going to come of this?

He stood there lost in thought, when he realized something. _pie. i’m determined to make a fucking pie. that’s what started the whole integration process. i wanted to make a pie because some old lady i’ve never met thought this pie was special- not any of the_ **_other_ ** _things i’ve tried since the accident. nooooo~ it was because of pie!_

Sans wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or scream. He decided on neither, the scream would likely alert the guard dogs of a problem and the laughter was gonna sound manic and demented. He settled on a bone rattling sigh instead. He need to get back to the problem at hand, he started walking again. Thinking anymore about this would shove his mood past the point of no return and the old lady’d hear it in his voice. She could be very perceptive when she wanted to be.

So now he **had** to figure out what went wrong with the crust, which meant he was gonna have to ask for help… She wouldn’t mind in the slightest, she had always wanted to be a teacher so this was perfectly normal for her, but for him- Well, he knew he had an arrogant streak about a mile wide, _thanks dad_ , so asking for help wasn’t really his thing… especially not now…

 

_puns and pie jokes. stop thinking about the past and stick to puns and pie jokes._

 

So he did. For the remained of the walk he riffled through his mental stockpile for a suitable joke. Faster than he would have liked he reached the door. He stopped several feet away and hesitated.

It was the first time he’d ever hesitated before knocking on the door. But in light of the emotional symptoms he’d started to feel and then scoop up and slam dunk into some deep dark crevice of his soul, where he’ll wholeheartedly ignore them for the rest of his natural life- it only seemed fair.

 

 _welp, i can’t keep her waiting forever…_  He took the last few steps towards the door.

 

*Knock Knock* “knock, knock.”

“Who is there?”, said the voice on the other side of the door. Her enthusiasm was barely contained.

His grin felt more comfortable and less like a decade bad habits. “butter.”

“Butter who?” asked her mellifluous voice.

“it’s butter if you don’t know”, he finished with a mocking bow and a glance towards the bush just off towards his right. Something inside glittered back.

  
Sans felt the tension drain out of him, the moment he heard her delighted snorting laugh. The camera could wait.


End file.
